Sermon Tone Analysis

In need of a king.

In today’s sermon I intend to pick up where I left off last week in terms of establishing the background of the book of Judges.

Last week I preached less of a sermon and gave more of a historical lecture on the history of the Israelite people as they were called out by God in Abraham, established through Isaac and Jacob, built up in Egypt, and led into the promised land by Joshua.

Today my goal is to overview some of the details of the book.

Who wrote it?

What are the major themes?

How can we approach an overview?

Title: Judges (Tribal Rulers)

Author: Officially Unknown.

Tradition: Samuel

Date: ca.

1380-1043 (roughly 350 years)

Theme: The Canaanization of Israel and its need for a King

Title:

Judges.

Sometimes old Testament books have different titles across the Hebrew manuscripts, the Septuagint (which is the Greek translation of the OT), and the early Latin manuscripts, but in this care there is complete unity.

It is the book of Judges.

It, of course, gets its name from the characters of the book who, though they are never called Judges as a title, they are said to have Judged Israel.

The word itself doesn’t have the same kind of connotation we would take for a judge today.

We think of judges to consider cased in legal setting.

The Hebrew has a slightly different range of meaning.

It refers more to the idea of ruling, governing, and delivering.

Thus the connotation is more about leading the people rather than judging in a legal setting.

Daniel Block suggests that a more accurate English translation for the Hebrew word that captures the idea better is “The book of Tribal Rulers”

Author

Officially we don’t know who the human author was.

The rabbinic tradition attributes authorship to Samuel, however some of the internal data seems to suggest that Samuel would have died by the time the book was fully finished.

It certainly is possible he wrote a significant portion of the book and it was finished by a later hand, similarly to Deuteronomy was largely written by Moses, but likely finished by Joshua with the death of Moses, and how Joshua was likely largely written by Joshua, but finished by another to record Joshua’s death.

Phrases like “in those days there was no king in Israel” and “they set up this monument, just as it is to this day” give us clues to the time-frame.

Ultimately who wrote it does not fully matter, but it is a relevant question because it give clues into the purpose for writing.

Date:

The time frame of the book is not as fixed as some historians would prefer.

The book itself opens with the death of Joshua, but Joshua’s death is mentioned again in chapter two.

Several of the Judges themselves overlap in time, and it is clear that the author did not pain himself too greatly with following a strict timeline, though there is no reason to question the basic flow.

All told, we are looking at ca. 1380-1043 BC, which is just a little under 350 years, though there is considerable debate about those things.

Theme: The Cannanization of Israel and its need for a King

Sub Themes: The Covenant Faithfulness of God; The Righteous Judgement of the Wicked; Cycles of Sin;

If had a chart of all the books of the bible on the wall, we would see this in the “history” section.

However, in the Hewbrew Bible, this was collected it was was called “the former prophets”

Though this book is history and we should embrace it as historically accurate, we must also recognize that it is theologized history.

This is not a mere mindless recounting of the facts without motive or purpose.

This book was written for a specific prophetic purpose, and I don’t mead prophetic as in speaking of the future.

The majority of the prophets spoke to their people about their own time, and only occasionally ave futuristic prophecies.

When I say it is prophetic I mean it it communication from God through a human agent to speak into the culture and to the people of the day with a specific goal and desired respone in mind.

The author presents to us a harrowing storyline of what happens when Israel gets too comfortable with the world.

It is a message of warning to the author’s contemporaries.

A message that bears significant weight and relevance for today.

Method

Before we move into the text itself, which we are going to do today, I want make a few comments on method.

When we teach through the NT, the reaching process is usually straightforward.

Paul is making a point.

What is that point.

How can we live to be obedient to the word.

Paul says “be kind to one another, tender-hearted and compassionate” and it’s not super difficult to figure out what he means and how that applies to us.

Things get a little more difficult when we step into the OT, doesn’t it?

Many Christians simply do not know how to handle OT texts.

How do we learn from it?

What are stories teaching?

Indeed, it is not uncommon for some church attendees to question why we both studying the OT at all, seeing as we are in the church age and the OT was given to Israel.

Wouldn’t we be better served sticking with the NT since it was given to the church?

The irony with this kind of objection is the that NT places a high value on studying and understanding the OT.

Many texts directly quote or allude to OT passages and the best way to understand the NT text is to have a firm grasp of the OT text it is quoting.

Furthermore, Paul directly states the value of the OT Scriptures when writing to a young pastor, Timothy:

Furthermore, we find this testimony in the book of Romans:

and finally 1 Cor 10:11 where we find Paul making direct application to our lives based on the OT narratives:

So we do well to Study the OT Scriptures, for in them we find instruction for our lives.

The question still remains, okay, how do we do that?

There have been a variety of approaches to studying the OT text over the years that I think are less than helpful if I’m putting charitably.

Possible approaches to the text:

Ignore it

Moralize it

Allegorize it

Typologize it

Seek Authorial Intent

First there is the moralizing approach.

This is common in children's Sunday schools and children’s church.

The idea is that we look at the stories and we boil everything down to either this is an example to follow or an example of what NOT to do.

Stories get reduced to hero and villains.

Gideon, look at his faith!

Now you should have faith too!

Oh man.

Look at what Samson did.

Shameful.

Don’t do that.

Allegory.

Sometimes people try to find spiritual significance from seemingly mundane details in the text.

So Gideon went out to fight the Midianites at night.

If we allegorize the text, we might say something like “This symbolizes the trials and tribulations we endure as believers in this world.

Sometimes when we fight the enemy we must do so in the midst of the darkest night”

Is that what the text is telling us?

Is that what the author meant to communicate?

No, he meant that Gideon went out to fight Midian at night.

Another form of this is when we are tempted to insert our own lives into the text and consider how we can be the hero just like the character in the story was.

This is famously done with David and Goliath.

We read that and try to insert ourselves into the text and we become David fighting against whatever Goliath is in our lives at the time.

To quote a famous preacher in a famous sermon, You’re not David.

There are things to be learned from the story, but it isn’t that you can vanquish all your foes if you just do such and such.

Finally, we want to avoid the error of what is presently called a Christo-centric hermeneutic.

Of all the errors that we could make, this one has the initial impression of being good and virtuous.

Why wouldn’t you want a Christ-centered approach to the text??